This space-centric pull-down Murphy bed (insert Interstellar‘Murph’ comment here) is clearly perfect for any space crazed kid’s room but if we’re being completely honest it would also look quite fetching in the small Chicago apartment of a certain Nerdist writer. Decked-out with shelves inside the booster rockets and a control panel to change the LED lighting, this bed is sure to involve some serious interplanetary fun even when not dreaming you’re an astronaut.

At an astonishingly high and near-NASA-like budget price point of $14,300.00, it would almost seem worth it to hold off, get your kids a normal bed and put that money toward a Virgin Galactic space flight for realsies.

Check out the rest of the theme beds made by Fable Bedworks here and start to wish you were 4 feet tall again. We can’t decide which would be cooler– living a Game Of Thrones life (sans the Lannister incest) with their castle drawbridge style Dragonslayer and Penny’s Palace or reenact City Slickers I and II in their Ol’ West Chuckwagon. Considerably cheaper at a mere $7300.00 we still think the money might be better spent hiring Jon Lovitz and Daniel Stern to reprise their roles and then do the reenactment all make believe without the bed itself.

Do you want to be a part of my City Slickers re-imagining? We’re still looking for a Curly/Duke. Uhh, I mean, what’s your dream bed set theme? Are there pull down bed themes that should exist? Let us know in the comments.

]]>http://nerdist.com/deepspace-defender-a-spaceship-bed-on-a-nasa-budget/feed/0Friday’s Total Solar Eclipse was Stunninghttp://nerdist.com/fridays-total-solar-eclipse-was-stunning/
http://nerdist.com/fridays-total-solar-eclipse-was-stunning/#commentsSat, 21 Mar 2015 20:30:34 +0000http://nerdist.com/?p=234058Spring kicked off with a pretty phenomenal solar eclipse this year. And while it was only seen in a small part of the globe, there are some pretty phenomenal pictures to show those of us who weren’t in the right place at the right time what we missed.

Total solar eclipses happen when the Moon moves between Sun and Earth, blocking the Sun’s light and casting a shadow on our planet. It’s a perfect alignment of celestial bodies astronomers call syzygy. And seeing one is pretty rare. Not only do total eclipses only happen during a new Moon, you have to be in the right place to see the Moon completely block the Sun.

In the case of the eclipse on March 20, the total eclipse was only seen by observers on Denmark’s Faroe Islands and Norway’s Svalbard Islands. Norway’s NRK News managed to capture a stunning video of the Sun disappearing behind clouds before disappearing behind the disk of the Moon as the eclipse reached totality. But even that wasn’t the best view.

A handful of satellites also caught the eclipse. The European Space Agency’s PROBA2, the second PRoject for OnBoard Autonomy satellite, caught the eclipse. Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, currently on the International Space Station, took some incredible pictures of the eclipse. The Eumetsat satellite that monitors weather and climate data from space, caught the shadow of the Moon on the Earth.

Friday’s eclipse is the last full eclipse we’ll see on the March equinox for another 19 years. And it was also the only total Solar eclipse of the year. The next will be next year on March 9, 2016, and totality will only be visible to observers in Sumatra, Borneo, and Sulawesi.

]]>http://nerdist.com/fridays-total-solar-eclipse-was-stunning/feed/0Interactive Comic Explains General Relativity with Superhuman Easehttp://nerdist.com/interactive-comic-explains-general-relativity-with-superhuman-ease/
http://nerdist.com/interactive-comic-explains-general-relativity-with-superhuman-ease/#commentsTue, 10 Mar 2015 18:40:07 +0000http://www.nerdist.com/?p=231203One hundred years ago, Albert Einstein changed physics with four pages of text. Off those pages leapt his general theory of relativity, published in December of 1915. It would go on to describe the universe at its largest and fastest. Gravity is warped space-time, and both time and space will bend according to the mass and energy peppering the universe. This brilliant insight is now one of the pillars of modern physics, born from the musings of a lone German physicist. As confusing as warped space-time may sound, you don’t need superpowers to understand it.

That’s all fine and good, but the physicist realized that an object can feel no force act on it yet still accelerate. That’s what would happen if you walked straight off a roof, and this scenario happens to be the exact same thought experiment Einstein envisioned.

So how can you explain the fact that an object in free-fall accelerates without a force acting on it? If gravity was warping space-time, then time might run slower at the Earth’s surface (it has more mass and therefore more gravity) than on the roof where he hypothetically stood. If that was the case, an object in free-fall could accelerate without being acted on by an outside force:

Of course, thought experiments only got Einstein so far. He needed to prove it. That took a lot of math and years of work.

But the central idea of gravity itself being warped space-time is easy enough to understand, at least explained this simply. As Einstein supposedly said, make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler. I wish my physics class had a comic like this.

]]>http://nerdist.com/interactive-comic-explains-general-relativity-with-superhuman-ease/feed/0We’ve Finally Reached a Dwarf Planet (and It’s Not Pluto)http://nerdist.com/weve-finally-reached-a-dwarf-planet-and-its-not-pluto/
http://nerdist.com/weve-finally-reached-a-dwarf-planet-and-its-not-pluto/#commentsSat, 07 Mar 2015 00:00:47 +0000http://www.nerdist.com/?p=230400You’d think that our first orbit around a dwarf planet would be around lonely Pluto, but it will have to wait for its first visitor in July. Today, NASA announced that its Dawn spacecraft has successfully entered the orbit of Ceres, another dwarf planet and the largest object in the asteroid belt where trillions of rocks tumble between Mars and Jupiter.

Ceres as seen from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft on March 1, 30,000 miles (48,000 kilometers) above the icy surface.

Ceres might look like any other cratered rock falling through the solar system, but Ceres has secrets to tell. We know that the dwarf planet has water in it, maybe 43 million cubic miles of it, but scientists are hoping to find evidence of liquid water as well. That could possibly mean life, or at least an expansion of the habitats we believe could be habitable.

Ceres is also enticing us with two bizarre bright spots on its surface. If those spots turn our to be ice volcanoes (a mound of ice formed from liquid water escaping the surface) or even just simple patches of ice reflecting sunlight back at Dawn, the hope for water in other forms stays alive.

The dwarf planet will tell us about our solar system in adolescence. Seeing as it is a body that never quite made it to planet status, its composition and mass should let scientists deduce how other objects in the solar system, and the asteroid belt, formed with respect to time.

It will be April before Dawn rises out from the dark side of this Texas-sized world and starts sending back data. But when it emerges from a shadow in the greatest of shadows, the spacecraft will start mapping Ceres’ surface, analyzing its chemical composition, and letting us in on the secrets of small planets.

—

IMAGE: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

]]>http://nerdist.com/weve-finally-reached-a-dwarf-planet-and-its-not-pluto/feed/4An Astronaut Salutes Spock from Spacehttp://nerdist.com/an-astronaut-salutes-spock-from-space/
http://nerdist.com/an-astronaut-salutes-spock-from-space/#commentsSun, 01 Mar 2015 15:00:50 +0000http://www.nerdist.com/?p=229036For many of us, Star Trek wasn’t just a show. Star Trek was tolerance and intelligence and morality and science and exploration. Take a poll of today’s scientists, engineers, and astronauts, and I’d be willing to bet a majority of them were influenced by Star Trek in some way.

After Leonard Nimoy passed away this week, those inspired by the man and the character he portrayed on Star Trek have been coming out with tributes to their favorite science officer. But there may be no better salute to how Nimoy helped urge young scientists and engineers into the final frontier than Terry W. Virts‘, taken aboard the International Space Station on Friday:

NASA has always recognized the galvanizing power of Star Trek. Nichelle Nichols, who played Lieutenant Uhura alongside Nimoy’s Spock, later became a recruiter for NASA. She toured the country encouraging diversity in astronaut applicants. Among those who listened were Charles Bolden, the current NASA administrator, and Sally Ride, the first American woman in space.

And in 1976, NASA revealed the space shuttle “Enterprise,” which was supposed to be called “Constitution” if not for a write-in campaign from Star Trek fans.

The huge and hugely positive influence of Star Trek, the unyielding call of space exploration, a vision of the final frontier…all of it is summed up in Virts’ touching salute to a departed hero. Fascinating.

]]>http://nerdist.com/an-astronaut-salutes-spock-from-space/feed/2Mars One Will Blast Off, But Probably Not Toward Marshttp://nerdist.com/mars-one-will-blast-off-but-probably-not-toward-mars/
http://nerdist.com/mars-one-will-blast-off-but-probably-not-toward-mars/#commentsSat, 28 Feb 2015 21:30:54 +0000http://www.nerdist.com/?p=228994Last week, the 202,586 applicants for the Mars One mission was whittled down to 100 hopefuls who will vie for the four spots on the first manned mission to Mars. It’s a step. A step closer to what? Probably not Mars.

The plan is to launch the first unmanned mission in 2018. It will be a proof-of-concept mission demonstrating the key technologies future colonists will rely on. In 2020, a rover will land on Mars to seek out the best spot for a settlement, somewhere North enough for the soil to be moist but near enough to the equator for ample sunlight for solar power. Six cargo missions will launch in 2022 and land about 6 miles from the rover’s chosen outpost site. The rover will then use its trailer to move life support units into the right location, deploy the solar panels for power, and inflate habitat units. Once everything’s together, the rover will feed soil into the life support system, which will begin extracting the water and oxygen that will make the habitats habitable. The first crew will leave for Mars in 2024.

The incremental nature of the mission makes sense; send robots to scope out the area and get the vital pieces set up first so the human crew can focus on their main goal of colonizing the red planet. But there are still more than enough reasons to see Mars One as a bit of a fool’s dream.

Let’s start with the proposed price tag. Mars One says it can get the first crew to our planetary neighbor for $6 billion, a cost that includes all the hardware, operational expenditures, and margins. Having done the mission once, the price will drop to $4 billion for every subsequent flight. That is a shoestring budget, especially considering a lot of the technology doesn’t actually exist right now. The mission seems to be relying on technology taking a massive leap forward in the next decade, then being available off the shelf when it’s time to go, keeping the cost down. But that’s banking on a lot of things that are out of the company’s control.

And speaking of money, funding is another issue. There are investors and crowdfunders donating money, but the bulk of the funding is meant to come from advertising and reality TV deals. Not only does this sound unlikely, but it’s a funding model that doesn’t really support the mission timeline all that well.

The Apollo program makes a good benchmark; it’s the only massive scale space program we really have to use as a reference point. The total cost of Apollo was about $20 billion in 1970, which is about $120 billion by today’s standards. Yes, NASA was basically inventing every piece of the Moon landing puzzle as it went along and Mars One has the benefit of 50 years of human history in space, but the technology for what Mars One is planning to do is about as advanced as the lunar module was in the early 1960s. And the bulk of Apollo’s funding came in the mid-1960s; Apollo took up 61 percent, 66 percent, 70 percent, and 64 percent of NASA’s total budget in 1965, 1966, 1967, and 1968 respectively. Those were the years where the bulk of the necessary technologies came to be and were extensively tested. After that, flying the missions was comparatively cheaper. By 1972, the year the last two missions flew, Apollo was taking up just 24 percent of NASA’s total budget.

Mars One’s model of gathering funding during the training and flight phase by broadcasting it on TV means the most money will come in after the big technological development phase. That means that the money to actually develop all the hardware and systems is coming from some mystery source. Even if it is taking advantage of existing technology like rockets and spacecraft, Mars One is quite cagey about what that existing technology is. The website only says it will secure these pieces from experienced suppliers. Who and what that technology is remains unclear.

There’s also the human side to consider. The 100 finalists were selected largely for their personalities and willingness to work with others. They aren’t necessarily scientists because science has never been the focus of Mars One. It’s a mission of colonization, but the crew will still have to maintain and repair their habitats and possibly themselves while learning to live off the Martian land. Not only does this demand a lot of specialized knowledge, it demands an exceptionally even and tolerant personality since the four crew members will spend their lives isolated together.

Mars One’s schedule has already slipped, and there are still a lot of unknowns and a lot of details about the proposed flight that aren’t clear. It’s that because Mars One is a private mission there’s a chance the team is actually doing all kinds of cutting edge work and just keeping it away from the public, but it’s more likely that this mission will join the list of unrealized spaceflight proposals historians will write about a century from now.

Ultimately, the reason to go is also unclear. The money being put into Mars One would be better spent on some robotic exploration mission that would help us understand our Solar System such that when we do have the technology to send humans to distant worlds we know exactly what we’re dealing with and how to do it.

The only positive about Mars One is that it’s getting people talking and thinking about interplanetary flight, but the proposed mission is so far from reality that it’s almost doing a disservice.

(Photo Credit: Mars One/Bryan Versteeg)

]]>http://nerdist.com/mars-one-will-blast-off-but-probably-not-toward-mars/feed/8NASA Shows Us a Blue Sunset on Marshttp://nerdist.com/nasa-shows-us-a-blue-sunset-on-mars/
http://nerdist.com/nasa-shows-us-a-blue-sunset-on-mars/#commentsThu, 26 Feb 2015 19:00:21 +0000http://www.nerdist.com/?p=228461Have you ever wondered what a sunset would look like on Mars? Wonder no more, because this video from NASA shows just what you’d see at the end of a Martian day.

This video is made of images taken by NASA’s Opportunity rover between November 4th and 5th, 2010. A few of the frames are enhanced or simulated to give the movie a better flow, but this is as close to a real Martian sunset as human eyes will see for at least a generation.

And it looks nothing like a sunset does on Earth. On Earth, incoming sunlight is scattered in all directions by the gases and particles in our atmosphere. The blue light is scattered more than other colors because it travels on a shorter wavelength, so we see a blue sky. When the Sun is low on the horizon around sunrise or sunset, the sunlight is passing through more atmosphere to your eyes. This means more of the blue light is scattered, allowing some of the longer wavelength blue and yellow hues to escape and reach your eyes, accounting for the amazing array of warm colors.

The same thing happens on Mars, but because the atmospheric composition is different, light scatters differently to give the Martian sky its characteristic red hue. The dusty particles and gases in Mars’ carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere scatter the sunlight reaching the planet such that the blue light is almost completely eliminated and the longer, reddish wavelengths survive to be seen.

Just like a sunset on Earth, the sunsets on Mars pass sunlight through more atmosphere, scattering light such that some blue light survives, making for a blue sunset. And because the Martian atmosphere is so much thinner than the Earth’s — Mars’ atmosphere is only about one percent as thick at the Earth’s — we don’t see the scattering sunset light diffusing through the sky as much. The blue light stays much closer to the Sun.

Opportunity landed on Mars in 2004 and was designed to last just 90 Sols (90 Martian days). Lucky for us Earthbound humans it’s still working more than a decade later, capturing vistas we would never otherwise see.

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IMAGES: NASA

]]>http://nerdist.com/nasa-shows-us-a-blue-sunset-on-mars/feed/14How to Make Your Home Look Like the Space-Time Continuumhttp://nerdist.com/how-to-make-your-home-look-like-the-space-time-continuum/
http://nerdist.com/how-to-make-your-home-look-like-the-space-time-continuum/#commentsMon, 23 Feb 2015 20:00:06 +0000http://www.nerdist.com/?p=227672Do you know what your home decor is missing? Accurate representations of the fabric of our universe, that’s what!

You’ve all probably heard the analogy — that objects in our universe are like bowling balls on a trampolines, bending space-time depending on their mass. It’s an imperfect analogy, but this bending at least gives us some visualization of how gravity can attract objects and even warp the flow of time. Every particle in the universe affects its fabric in this way, which is why having a home filled with distorted space-time grids is sure to be a huge hit in any nerd’s home.

You could first replace your carpet with these amazing designs from Ege Carpets:

Who wouldn’t want to stumble around on that? I’d wait until my cat sat right on one of the depressions then have a good squee.

]]>http://nerdist.com/how-to-make-your-home-look-like-the-space-time-continuum/feed/2Even Conspiracy Theorists Must Admit Stabilized Moon Driving Looks Awesomehttp://nerdist.com/even-conspiracy-theorists-must-admit-stabilized-moon-driving-looks-awesome/
http://nerdist.com/even-conspiracy-theorists-must-admit-stabilized-moon-driving-looks-awesome/#commentsSat, 21 Feb 2015 16:00:01 +0000http://www.nerdist.com/?p=227414Less than two weeks before Apollo 11 successfully landed men on the Moon, the plans for a car that would drive on the Moon’s surface were coming together. Dubbed the Lunar Roving Vehicle or LRV, three of these vehicles were eventually taken to the light side of the Moon to give astronauts greater mobility.

Electric rovers, the LRVs (the images show the LRV used on the Apollo 16 mission) were made to operate in the near-vacuum of the lunar surface and handle the oddly-shaped dust, or regolith, that coated it. The footage of men riding around on the Moon is simply hard to believe it’s so surreal.

But as you may have noticed from the GIFs above, our footage of lunar rovers looks even more amazing when the bumps and jiggles of extraterrestrial camera work is stabilized. This stabilized footage, uploaded by YouTuber britoca, was made using a Deshaker v2.5 filter for VirtualDub 1.9.9 combined with the Apollo Mission 16mm High Definition Transfers.

]]>http://nerdist.com/even-conspiracy-theorists-must-admit-stabilized-moon-driving-looks-awesome/feed/4All the Planets’ Atmospheres in One Handy Infographichttp://nerdist.com/all-the-planets-atmospheres-in-one-handy-infographic/
http://nerdist.com/all-the-planets-atmospheres-in-one-handy-infographic/#commentsSat, 21 Feb 2015 03:00:31 +0000http://www.nerdist.com/?p=227366If you’ve ever wanted a handy infographic to break down the atmospheres of all the planets in our solar system, because science, your wish has been granted. Andy Brunning, a chemistry teacher from the UK who creates infographics on his blog Compound Interest has just released a stunning one about the planets’ atmospheric structures and their different effects.

Click to enlarge!

Brunning focuses on the four terrestrial planets and four gas giants that make up our solar system. The Earth is of course the most familiar and is therefore the benchmark planet. At sea level, our nitrogen and oxygen-filled atmosphere weighs in at, well, one atmosphere.

Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun, has an atmosphere about one trillion times thinner than Earth’s. And being so close to then Sun and smaller — Mercury has only about 38 percent the gravity of Earth — the planet has a hard time holding on to what little atmosphere it does have. This isn’t at all like Venus, which has an atmospheric pressure about 92 times what we feel at sea level on Earth. Its atmosphere is also composed mainly of toxic carbon dioxide featuring clouds of sulfur dioxide and sulfuric acid. This is, again, very different from our other neighbor, Mars. Mars’ atmosphere is also largely composed of carbon dioxide but is significantly thinner than the Earth’s; the atmospheric pressure there is about 0.006 times what we feel at sea level.

Things change when you get to the gas giants. Jupiter, the largest planet in the Solar System actually has an atmospheric composition similar to the Sun, and with a pressure more than a thousand times greater than what we feel on Earth. Hydrogen can actually exist as a liquid here, conducting electricity and generating the planet’s massive electromagnetic field. Saturn is similar with an atmosphere more than a thousand times heavier than the Earth’s composed largely of ammonia ice and clouds of ammonia hydrosulfide.

The ice giants are similar to the gas giants with atmospheres more than a thousand times as heavy as the Earth’s. Uranus’ atmosphere is also composed largely of hydrogen and helium. It has a high concentration of methane, too, which absorbs red light from the Sun and makes the planet look blue. Neptune is also composed largely of hydrogen and methane, though it’s thought that there’s something else in the atmosphere that accounts for its deeper blue hue.

It’s pretty great that in one simple infographic Brunning manages to capture the incredible variety of the worlds that make up our planetary neighborhood. You can download high-res versions of this infographic, as well as one about Pluto and one about Saturn’s moon Titan, at Compound Interest.

http://nerdist.com/all-the-planets-atmospheres-in-one-handy-infographic/feed/31,826 Stunning Days of Solar Activity in Five Minuteshttp://nerdist.com/1826-stunning-days-of-solar-activity-in-five-minutes/
http://nerdist.com/1826-stunning-days-of-solar-activity-in-five-minutes/#commentsThu, 19 Feb 2015 00:30:56 +0000http://www.nerdist.com/?p=226733Looking blankly at the Sun (which you should never do without protective eye gear), you might not think it’s very interesting. From our Earthly vantage point, our star looks like a bright but bland ball in the sky. But NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Centre has just released a gorgeous video comprising years of highlights from the agency’s Solar Dynamic Observatory, and it shows just how dynamic our star really is:

Launched on February 11, 2010, SDO is the first mission launched under NASA’s Living With a Star program, a program designed to help us understand the Sun’s dynamic activity and its effects on the Earth. It’s trickier than just pointing a camera our star. The SDO orbits the Earth at about 6,876 miles per hour, and the Earth orbits the Sun at 67,062 miles per hour.

And yet the spacecraft is able to take incredibly clear and steady images of our Sun in striking detail. Since returning its first images of the Sun months after launch, SDO has had a nearly uninterrupted view of the Sun. It’s suite of three onboard instruments — the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly, the EUV Variability Experiment, and the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager — all image the Sun almost constantly, simultaneously, and in multiple wavelengths. The Atmospheric Imaging Assembly, for example, takes one image of the Sun every 12 seconds in 10 different light wavelengths.

The video also displays solar flares and coronal mass ejections in exquisite detail, violent events that can send radiation and solar material hurtling towards Earth, knocking out satellites and causing electrical blackouts. Scientists ultimately hope the data from SDO will help explain these potential catastrophes so we can protect ourselves from space weather.

If you want to learn more about the Sun, check out this earlier video that shows similar details of the Sun but with expert commentary from Goddard heliophysicist Alex Young:

]]>http://nerdist.com/1826-stunning-days-of-solar-activity-in-five-minutes/feed/1Meet the 100 People Who are Hoping to Die on Marshttp://nerdist.com/meet-the-100-people-who-are-hoping-to-die-on-mars/
http://nerdist.com/meet-the-100-people-who-are-hoping-to-die-on-mars/#commentsWed, 18 Feb 2015 18:30:18 +0000http://www.nerdist.com/?p=226701Here’s the pitch: You can be one of the first humans on Mars, but you aren’t coming back. What would you say?

For the applicants to the Dutch non-profit Mars One, the answer is an emphatic “yes,” and the company is hoping to start handing out these one-way tickets to the Red Planet as early as 2024. Now, from a pool of 200,000 hopefuls who applied last year, the field has winnowed to 100. And you can meet them all.

Sabrina, age 36, is a world-traveler who is currently teaching and writing in Japan. Alison, 35, is a secondary school lab technician in London. Mido, 32, is a financial planner from Egypt.

Of these 100 applicants, 24 will eventually be chosen for six 4-person teams. The next step, at least according to this fantastic graphic from the Washington Post, is to start testing the applicant’s mathematics, survival skills, and ability to deal with each other. Rigorous training will continue until rovers and living units are robotically deposited on Mars sometime between 2020 and 2024.

There is a curious thread running through these applicants. There has to be. It takes a certain kind of outlook of life to want to take on a one-way mission, especially one that a recent MIT study concluded would be fatal shortly after two months on the Martian surface. The impression I get is that it is a combination of desperation and an adventurer’s spirit, depression and hopes for a legacy.

This odd feeling is best captured by “If I Die on Mars,” a short documentary interviewing three Mars One hopefuls:

Personally, I’m conflicted over Mars One as an idea. I don’t think that humanity’s next push across the solar system should be led by just anyone with a dream and or nothing to lose. There’s a good reason we look for “the right stuff.” Mars One has made the next giant leap look like a reality show, no matter if the applicants will be trained as rigorously as astronauts by the time the first rocket launches. It all seems rather reckless.

But maybe that recklessness, that willingness to plunge into the abyss no matter your fate, is part of the pioneer that I am missing.

Author’s Note: The author of this post was asked to provide commentary for the video above, though without monetary compensation.

]]>http://nerdist.com/meet-the-100-people-who-are-hoping-to-die-on-mars/feed/10LEGO Blasts Off Into Space With New City Sethttp://nerdist.com/lego-blasts-off-into-space-with-new-city-set/
http://nerdist.com/lego-blasts-off-into-space-with-new-city-set/#commentsTue, 17 Feb 2015 19:30:00 +0000http://www.nerdist.com/?p=226394LEGO‘s new City sets will include a whole line of NASA sets, to inspire the youngest (and youngest at heart) astronauts. We saw the new releases at Toy Fair in New York City this week. It was tough to keep from being distracted by the adorableness of some of the more common City scenes, like this one:

But we did manage to keep it together long enough to get some exciting shots of the upcoming Space Port sets. They will include shuttles, countdown clocks, astronauts and NASA employees of different seniorities, transport systems and more. The entire City set is for ages 5+ and should inspire with real life heroes. We just want to build the shuttle systems and zoom them around our living room. Is that so bad?

Other scenes that the City sets will explore with this update include scenes from a Demolition, Swamp Police, Town Transport and Sea Exploration. The City set is a classic with more than thirty sets to inspire a kid’s imagination and teach them valuable build-and-play skills while they have fun. Alongside the new scenes, are scenes that builders will find immediately familiar– like the coffee shop above and a gas station with pump included. There are trees to set scenes, as well as LEGO men and women to bring them to life.

These new sets will vary in price from $6.99 all the way to $189.99.

How cool do the City sets look to you? Build your complete thoughts in the comments below.

]]>http://nerdist.com/lego-blasts-off-into-space-with-new-city-set/feed/1Explore Our Stellar Neighborhood With a Gorgeous Google Interactivehttp://nerdist.com/explore-our-stellar-neighborhood-with-a-gorgeous-google-interactive/
http://nerdist.com/explore-our-stellar-neighborhood-with-a-gorgeous-google-interactive/#commentsMon, 16 Feb 2015 19:00:02 +0000http://www.nerdist.com/?p=225642Over two years ago, Michael Chang with the Data Arts Team at Google created an amazing interactive called 100,000 Stars as a part of Chrome Experiments. It was a case study in creative coding. It also turned out beautifully.

In 100,000 Stars (feel free to click out of here and go explore) you are treated to a fluid and informative view of the heavens that surround our solar system in all directions. But you don’t have to explore this vastness on your own. Click on the play button on the top left of the page and the interactive whisks you along on an automated tour.

Chang used freely available data on the positions of 119,000 stars “near” our sun and went though a number of coding steps far beyond me (he explains the entire process here) to apply the neat lens flares and galactic backdrops. The whole experience is visually satisfying and actually taught me something.

The gorgeous and somewhat haunting sci-fi background music helps too. So start exploring!

Kelly and Kornienko will stay in orbit around Earth for a full year after they leave Earth this September. Kelly, for his part, will be participating in a ground-breaking twin study, where he will be compared with his identical twin Mark Kelly after a year in space to give us a better idea of long-term micro-gravity’s affect on the human body.

It’s a bold mission that deserves a super geeky poster. The poster delivers:

Late last year, Interstellar blew our minds with stunning visuals and the latest entry in the McConaissance. It also promised that much of the science in the film would be based firmly in reality. Today, Christopher Nolan and science adviser Kip Thorne have made good on that promise.

Double Negative Visual Effects, in collaboration with physicist Kip Thorne and colleagues, are now showing off the most accurate visualization of a spinning black hole we have to date in the journal Classic and Quantum Gravity. As I explain in the video above, this new view of Interstellar‘s “Gargantua” looks quite different from what we saw in the film. Some of the changes were artistic, some were to help the audience understand what the heck was going on.

Either way, seeing real science come out of a Hollywood blockbuster is pretty alright, alright, alright.

According to SpaceX’s latest update, the satellite has successfully detached and is on its way into orbit. DSCOVR is headed towards Lagrangian point L1 between the Sun and Earth — a region of space where the gravity between the two bodies is “stable.” From there, the satellite can maintain its orbit with gravity alone.

1,500,000 kilometers (930,000 miles) above Earth, the DSCOVR satellite will “beam back imagery of Earth, observe space weather, and provide advanced warning of extreme emissions from the sun which can affect power grids, communications systems, and satellites close to Earth,” according to SpaceX.

But the second part of the SpaceX launch — recapturing the Falcon 9 rocket after use — was not another first for the company. With only three of four working engines and 30-foot waves crashing over the deck, SpaceX’s drone barge was unable to operate in today’s extreme weather, and was called back to shore.

Even so, when the Falcon 9 booster does return to Earth, it will still attempt a “soft landing” — basically a controlled crash in the ocean. Even this is a learning opportunity. According to Elon Musk on Twitter, if the barge could have braved the weather, there would have been a good chance for success:

Rocket soft landed in the ocean within 10m of target & nicely vertical! High probability of good droneship landing in non-stormy weather.

]]>http://nerdist.com/spacex-finally-launches-a-satellite-still-hasnt-caught-a-rocket/feed/0Gravity Lets the Universe Make Smiley Faces at Ushttp://nerdist.com/gravity-lets-the-universe-make-smiley-faces-at-us/
http://nerdist.com/gravity-lets-the-universe-make-smiley-faces-at-us/#commentsTue, 10 Feb 2015 22:00:26 +0000http://www.nerdist.com/?p=225352When amateur astronomer Judy Schmidt started looking at the Hubble Telescope’s images of the galaxy cluster mouthfully named SDSSJ1038+4849, she saw a face smiling back at her.

Click to enlarge!

Schmidt was processing image data from Hubble as a part of the Hubble’s Hidden Treasures project when she found this stunning example of face pareidolia. Instead of Jesus on toast, it was a face in the cosmos. Seven billion light years away, the bright eyes of the face are two galaxies in the cluster. But what about the mouth and the circle outline? Does the universe actually have structures like that?

Most of the smiley face in the image above is actually an illusion produced by so-called “gravitational lensing.” Gravitational lensing is the result of gravity’s pull on light. When something, like a galaxy cluster, has enormous gravity, it can bend the fabric of space so that even mass-less light bends according to the curve.

Gravitational lensing at work.

One of the most famous examples of gravitational lensing is the Einstein Cross. In the image we see a point of light surrounded by four others, when in reality those are four images of one object. There are not four lights. The duplication is gravity’s fault.

While it may be an illusion, seeing billion-year-old light curved into a way that tickles our fancy for faces is still pretty special.

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IMAGE: NASA; ESA

]]>http://nerdist.com/gravity-lets-the-universe-make-smiley-faces-at-us/feed/2Watch Captain Kirk Battle Darth Vader in an Epic STAR WARS VS STAR TREK Fan-Made Trailer!http://nerdist.com/watch-captain-kirk-battle-darth-vader-in-an-epic-star-wars-vs-star-trek-fan-made-trailer/
http://nerdist.com/watch-captain-kirk-battle-darth-vader-in-an-epic-star-wars-vs-star-trek-fan-made-trailer/#commentsSun, 08 Feb 2015 17:00:21 +0000http://www.nerdist.com/?p=224905There are some rivalries that can never be settled, even if they’re only rivalries in the minds of their fans. Dracula and Frankenstein. Beatles and Stones. Marvel and DC. And, of course, Star Wars and Star Trek. Since the release of A New Hope back in ’77, countless debates have raged across the globe as to which space opera is superior: George Lucas’ science fantasy film or Gene Roddenberry’s science fiction TV series. It’s a case of apples and oranges of course, with no real barometer by which to measure the two. (Man, am I mixing metaphors today or what?!) But if you’ve ever had a hankering to see these two beloved franchises battle it out, we have a trailer mash-up trailer you simply must behold. Prepare yourself for Alex Luthor’s latest fan-made Epic Trailer, Star Wars vs Star Trek…

Oh yes indeed! There is some mad editing going on in the above video, which obviously draws from the Star Wars prequels and video games as well as the Original Trilogy, and J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek and Star Trek Into Darkness. Kudos to Alex Luthor, whose Marvel vs DC and Star Wars vs DC Marvel are other must-watch videos in this Epic Trailer series (especially if you’ve ever wanted to watch Batman wield a lightsaber). Now Disney just has to buy Paramount and all of our wildest nerd dreams will come true!

What do you think of the above trailer? Would you recommend it to your friends or have you seen better? Let us know below. In the meantime, live long and may the Force be with you.

]]>http://nerdist.com/watch-captain-kirk-battle-darth-vader-in-an-epic-star-wars-vs-star-trek-fan-made-trailer/feed/9The ISS’s Robotic Work Station is Beyond Sci-Fihttp://nerdist.com/the-isss-robotic-work-station-is-beyond-sci-fi/
http://nerdist.com/the-isss-robotic-work-station-is-beyond-sci-fi/#commentsSat, 07 Feb 2015 16:00:14 +0000http://www.nerdist.com/?p=224335There are only one set of windows that aren’t on Earth. Inside them sit astronauts gazing on our pale blue dot, using a workstation that should be the cover of a science fiction novel.

Click to enlarge!

This is the interior of the cupola module of the International Space Station. It’s where the astronauts snap all those amazing images you see on Twitter (and where Commander Chris Hadfield became a household name). But it’s also where our extraterrestrials operate the station’s robotic arm, known as Canadarm2 (seen glowing red in the right window). With this sci-fi-looking workstation, astronauts use the Canadarm2 to assist in spacewalks and grapple incoming cargo vehicles. The arm originally helped put the station itself together.

Aside from the functionality of the module, what really grabs your attention are the colors. When the ISS’s interior lights turn off and the crew experiences “night,” blue and green lights flicker on to keep instruments illuminated. The cupola looks gorgeous and slightly creepy, as does the rest of the station. I suppose that the closest thing we have to science fiction should at least look the part.

]]>http://nerdist.com/the-isss-robotic-work-station-is-beyond-sci-fi/feed/1Right Now Pluto is Only Pixels, But Its First Visitor is On The Wayhttp://nerdist.com/right-now-pluto-is-only-pixels-but-its-first-visitor-is-on-the-way/
http://nerdist.com/right-now-pluto-is-only-pixels-but-its-first-visitor-is-on-the-way/#commentsFri, 06 Feb 2015 19:30:16 +0000http://www.nerdist.com/?p=224561Pluto has been through a lot. Since it was first discovered in 1930 by American astronomer Clyde W. Tombaugh, it’s been demoted to a dwarf plant and we’ve only been able to see a few pixels of it from the Hubble Telescope. Neither of the two Voyager spacecraft could rendezvous with Pluto, and a mission to explore its surface in detail wasn’t launched until 2006, a full 76 years after its discovery. In some sense Pluto is lonely.

That’s about to change. For the last nine years, the New Horizons spacecraft has slingshot itself around planets and plowed through three billion miles of empty space space at 31,000 miles per hour to meet Pluto. It will be July before New Horizons makes its closest pass by the icy, oddly-shaped rock, but on January 25th and 27th of this year the spacecraft started taking pictures to show it is almost there. From 126 million miles away, we still are getting just pixels, but it is data showing us what is to come.

Pluto and its moon Charon magnified four times to make the objects more visible.

The new images were taken with New Horizons’ telescopic Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), which will be used to take hundreds of images of Pluto and its moons over the coming months. As the spacecraft closes in on the dwarf planet, the resolution will increase, Pluto and its moon Charon will spread further apart (in this image’s orientation), and our loneliest Kuiper Belt Object will get its first visitor.

Hal Weaver, New Horizons project scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory put it beautifully in a press release. “Pluto is finally becoming more than just a pinpoint of light.”

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IMAGES: NASA/JHU APL/SwRI

]]>http://nerdist.com/right-now-pluto-is-only-pixels-but-its-first-visitor-is-on-the-way/feed/2This Planet’s Rings are 200 Times Larger Than Saturn’shttp://nerdist.com/this-planets-rings-are-200-times-larger-than-saturns/
http://nerdist.com/this-planets-rings-are-200-times-larger-than-saturns/#commentsSat, 31 Jan 2015 18:00:23 +0000http://www.nerdist.com/?p=222318Sometimes astronomers find something that completely changes the way we think about planets, like a planet that is completely dwarfed by its ring system.

We aren’t totally sure why planets have rings. One theory is that rings form when a planet’s gravity is too strong to allow the debris that surrounds it to coalesce into a moon. Another theory is that passing asteroids or comets break apart nascent moons, turning them into rings. In any case, ring systems are governed by forces that keep the rings in check, whether they are thin like the ones around Jupiter or majestic like the system around Saturn where shepherd moons help keep each ring distinct from its neighbor.

The exoplanet called J1407b was discovered by a team of astronomers from the Leiden Observatory and the University of Rochester in 2012. And it has a massive ring system unlike any we’ve ever seen. The team modeled it indirectly. By measuring the variation in the dimming light as the planet passed in front of its host star, the astronomers could paint a rough picture of the system around the distant planet, which is far larger than either Jupiter or Saturn.

This planet’s system consists of more than 30 rings, each of which is tens of millions of miles across. Saturn’s rings, for a point of comparison, are only about 175,000 miles across. And this exoplanet’s ring system has gaps, which suggest that there might be moons within the rings similar to the shepherd moons Saturn has.

Leiden astronomer Matthew Kenworthy put it into an interesting perspective: “If we could replace Saturn’s rings with the rings around J1407b, they would be easily visible at night and be many times larger than the full moon.”

Discoveries like this one are as close as we can get to observing early satellite formation and help us understand how our own solar system formed. They also remind us that not everything is going to look familiar, because there’s a lot of variety in the universe.

]]>http://nerdist.com/this-planets-rings-are-200-times-larger-than-saturns/feed/0The Last Asteroid That Passed the Earth Has a Moonhttp://nerdist.com/the-last-asteroid-that-passed-the-earth-has-a-moon/
http://nerdist.com/the-last-asteroid-that-passed-the-earth-has-a-moon/#commentsFri, 30 Jan 2015 21:00:48 +0000http://www.nerdist.com/?p=222321An asteroid passed 745,000 miles from the Earth this past Monday, but the most interesting thing about its passing was its tiny moon.

The passing asteroid is called 2004 BL86, and we knew it was coming. Astronomers have been tracking its trajectory and knew that this pass would be its closest to the Earth for the next two centuries. So astronomers working at NASA’s Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, California, were ready.

What they found in radar images is that BL86, which is only about 1,100 feet across, has a very small moon about 230 feet across that’s been traveling through space with it. The pair were captured in 20 individual images that NASA stitched together into a movie.

It’s actually not that rare for asteroids to have companion bodies. In the population of known near-Earth asteroids, about 16 percent are like BL86 — larger than 655 feet across and part of a pair or binary system. Some are even known to have two moons.

For the moment, this recent pass by BL86 is the closest an asteroid will come to the Earth until the asteroid1999 AN10 flies past us in 2027. But there are more asteroids out there that we don’t know about that we should want to find. If one looks like it’s going to come uncomfortably close to our planet, we’re going to need time to Armageddon that thing.

There are a few ways to deflect an asteroid so it doesn’t hit the Earth and wipe out humanity, though nuking it and turning it into more rocks isn’t the best one. A solar sail could use concentrated solar energy to nudge an asteroid’s path just enough for it to miss hitting the Earth. Spacecraft with mirrors aiming light onto the asteroid, and also painting one white are two other possible ways to use solar energy to deflect an asteroid. Some scientists have considered attaching ballast to an asteroid, changing its center of gravity and thus its orbit. Zapping an asteroid with lasers could break pieces off of it, changing its trajectory just enough to make it miss the Earth.

There are a lot of interesting ways to deflect asteroids out there. Because while it’s fascinating to find an asteroid with a moon, it’s better to find an asteroid with a moon knowing it’s not going to impact the Earth.

]]>http://nerdist.com/the-last-asteroid-that-passed-the-earth-has-a-moon/feed/4Here’s What Spaceship Earth’s Control Panel Might Look Likehttp://nerdist.com/heres-what-spaceship-earths-control-panel-might-look-like/
http://nerdist.com/heres-what-spaceship-earths-control-panel-might-look-like/#commentsTue, 27 Jan 2015 19:30:30 +0000http://www.nerdist.com/?p=221995Have you ever wondered what the control panel for the Earth would look like if our planet was a spacecraft? Eleanor Lutz did, and this is what she came up with.

The inspiration for this infographic comes somewhat indirectly though Lutz’s dislike of tax season; NASA is among her favorite tax-funded programs in America. She describes it as “a mix between sci-fi and pinball,” flashing information that is completely scientifically accurate.

Most of the information is about the Earth-Moon system. It shows the Earth’s tilt, gravity, diameter, gas levels, orbital velocity, and rotation. The planet’s orbit around the Sun is also shown in two moving graphics. One shows its distance from the Sun on a sine wave while the other shows the Earth traveling around an ellipse, the months flashing by to show the progression of the seasons.

There’s also a lot of information on the Moon. Our satellite’s gravity is displayed, as well as its surface area, volume, density, and current phase. It also shows how far the Moon is from the Earth and a rotating image to show its current phase.

And perhaps the most striking part is the visualization of the stars rotating as seen from the Earth, specifically from Seattle. It’s an incredible perspective on what we look up and see as unmoving stars.